Teachers given professional credit for 'Fistgate'

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following includes descriptions of adult themes and objectionable subject material.

Kevin Jennings at the 2000 conference

A Massachusetts organization that promotes families says teachers in the state were offered professional credit for attending a now-infamous 2000 seminar in which students were instructed in lewd homosexual practices.

According to research by staff and volunteers for Mass Resistance, the state Department of Education formally recognized the conference organized by the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network and supervised by Kevin Jennings – now President Obama’s chief of the education department’s office of “safe schools” – with the credit.

“Kevin Jennings and his organization GLSEN worked hand-in-hand with the Massachusetts Department of Education,” the Mass Resistance report documents. “The DOE has tried to distance itself from the infamous GLSEN-Boston Fistgate conference in 2000. But that won’t wash. They were in this together.”

The result was “Becoming Visible,” which opens with, “Why teach gay and lesbian history? … Indeed, as lesbian and gay studies has emerged as a discipline over the last two decades, its dramatic discoveries have shown it to be one of the most exciting fields in contemporary historical scholarship.”

Researchers at Mass Resistance said Sasha Alyson of Alyson Publications asked Jennings to do the book.

In Jennings’ acknowledgments for the book, he writes, “Writing this part of the book has caused me more anxiety than any other. It simply is not possible to express my gratitude to the many people who have helped make this book possible. … With apologies to anyone omitted, here we go! The obvious place to begin is with Alyson Publications. First, Sasha Alyson had the vision to conceive of this project, and I had the good luck to be the person he sought out to complete it. I am deeply appreciative of being afforded this opportunity.”

There have been multiple reports about the Massachusetts school seminar 10 years ago sponsored by GLSEN that included instructors providing explicit direction on homosexual activities, such as “fisting.”

The subject has been raised as a direct challenge to Jennings’ fitness to hold office, and, as WND has reported, several dozen members of Congress have signed a letter to President Obama demanding his dismissal.

Mass Resistance now says the Massachusetts education commissioner, David P. Driscoll, wrote a welcoming letter for the conference, stating, “I am proud that Massachusetts has taken a leadership role in creating safer schools for gay, lesbian and bisexual students. More than at any other time, through the efforts of community-based organizations such as GLSEN and PFLAG, Massachusetts students, educators and parents are participating in Safe Schools programs that make a positive difference.”

In addition, Mass Resistance said “teachers were also able to collect professional development credits for attendance.”

“We can’t imagine that the DOE would extend professional credits for an event unless they knew the content of the workshops. Two of the instructors of the fisting workshop were DOE employees (in the ‘Safe Schools’ program). If the DOE people knew the content, wouldn’t the man in charge of the conference know too?

“That would be Kevin Jennings. And the Mass. DOE ‘Safe Schools’ program was his brainchild,” the report said.

The teacher insisted on anonymity in her interview with Hoft out of concern for her own safety and that of her family. She addressed the focus of seminars at the conference that, according to reports, provided children as young as 12 instructions on how to engage in homosexual acts.

The teacher, identified only as MT, said, “This whole conference was his [Kevin Jennings’] dream and his mindset. This was his vision from the very beginning.”

Brian Camenker and Amy Contrada at Mass Resistance in Massachusetts also have posted online audio recordings from the seminar, documenting discussions such as whether to “spit or swallow” during oral sex and how to accomplish “fisting.”

“Of course Jennings and the Massachusetts Department of Education knew beforehand what the ‘sexuality educators’ would discuss with children at the ‘fisting’ workshop,” Mass Resistance said in a recent report. “The instructor Margot Abels said so herself.”

The state instruction program, labeled “Safe Schools for Gay and Lesbian Students,” was held April 18, 2000.

“We respectfully request that you remove Kevin Jennings, the Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, from your administration. It is clear that Mr. Jennings lacks the appropriate qualifications and ethical standards to serve in this capacity.”

Dozens of members of Congress have joined the effort to remove Jennings, who has described how he developed the strategy to use the word “safe” to promote homosexuality in Massachusetts schools.

WND also has reported concerns by Mission America over subject material in books recommended by GLSEN for school children.

The group’s Linda Harvey warned, “GLSEN believes the early sexualization of children can be beneficial. This means that virtually any sexual activity as well as exposure to graphic sexual images and material is not just permissible but good for children, as part of the process of discovering their sexuality.”

Her report cited one passage from a book recommended for students in grades 7-12: “I released his arms. They glided around my neck, pulling my head down to his. I stretched full length on top of him, our heads touching. Our heavy breathing from the struggle gradually subsided. I felt …”

What follows in “Growing Up Gay–Growing Up Lesbian” by Malcolm Boyd is a “graphic description” of a homosexual encounter.

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, wrote, “On September 23, I wrote a news release on the curious moral credentials of Kevin Jennings to be President Obama’s Safe Schools Czar: a former drug user and irresponsible teen counselor, he is also a Christian basher.

“What was not known at the time is that he is also a proud member of Act Up, the homosexual urban terrorist group that broke into St. Patrick’s Cathedral (in New York City) in 1989 and disrupted Mass; the Eucharist was desecrated and obscene depictions of Cardinal O’Connor were posted,” he continued.

“Now a group called Mass Resistance, and the website WorldNetDaily, have exposed Jennings as a member of Act Up. And he is no mere member: Jennings is listed as a donor to a sick display, ‘Act Up New York: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis, 1987-1993,’ currently featured at the Harvard Art Museum. Harvard, of course, would never feature a display of Klan paraphernalia and say it was being done for the purpose of ‘dialogue,'” he said.

“The real story here is not the corruption of Harvard – that’s old hat – the real story is the president of the United States choosing a morally challenged anti-Catholic homosexual to join his team. That Jennings belongs to, and sponsors, an urban terrorist organization, should alone disqualify him from public service at a municipal level. And remember, Obama did not choose him to monitor global cooling – he was chosen to instruct youth on moral matters,” Donohue said.

“Catholics deserve to know why Obama likes Jennings.”

A YouTube video revealed Jeff Davis, Jennings’ “partner,” addressing a banquet and saying of Jennings, “He was a member of Act Up. Act Up! So it’s like – you know – here’s a big gay activist. BIG gay activist!”

The defiant, storm-trooper tactics of in-your-face groups like Act Up (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) may or may not have been successful in pressuring the federal government to increase its commitment to combating AIDS. But such tactics definitely were successful in giving activist homosexuals a very bad name.

One infamous incident was the assault on New York’s famed St. Patrick’s Cathedral on December 10, 1989. While Cardinal John O’Connor presided over the 10:15 Sunday morning Mass, a multitude of “pro-choice” and “gay rights” activists protested angrily outside. Some, wearing gold-colored robes similar to clerical vestments, hoisted a large portrait of a pornographically altered frontal nude portrait of Jesus.

Then it got really ugly. Scores of protesters entered the church, resulting in what many in the packed house of parishioners described as a “nightmare.”

“The radical homosexuals turned a celebration of the Holy Eucharist into a screaming babble of sacrilege by standing in the pews, shouting and waving their fists, tossing condoms into the air,” recounted the New York Post. One of the invaders grabbed a consecrated wafer and threw it to the ground.

Outside, demonstrators, many of them members of Act Up, carried placards that summed up their sentiments toward the Catholic Church: “Keep your church out of my crotch.” “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries.” “Eternal life to Cardinal John O’Connor NOW!” “Curb your dogma.”

Clearly, the young movement was flirting with oblivion if it persisted in such ugly, indefensible tactics. It needed a new, more civilized direction if it ever hoped to convince Americans that homosexuality was a perfectly normal alternative lifestyle.

According to Mass Resistance research by Amy Contrada, the Act Up effort also:

Staged a “die-in” at Massachusetts General Hospital to protest the unavailability of pneumocystic-pneumonia drug aerosolized pentamidine.